


After

by GoodFrith



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Dead from the outset Patroclus, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, POV Second Person, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 03:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4505904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodFrith/pseuds/GoodFrith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You cannot seem to do anything but sleep, curled up in the space he left behind. You continue to wake and it troubles you."<br/>Or<br/>Achilles grieves</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Try listening to "Youth" by Daughter just before you read, for extra sad.

You know it is coming and yet you still do not expect this: him beside you, cold. Your hands on his chest are chilled where they slide sleepily, looking for that live racing beat. You do not find it.

Half-asleep, you wonder if it is hiding. Then you wake.

He is dead.

The thought appears and floods your mind . Where his spine had lined your abdomen it wilts. The empty shell of his body has expired, unable to contain his soul any longer.

Last night, as you fought your eyelids and held him fiercely enough to bruise, he had told you he loved you. Something inside you had known it was goodbye but had refused the thought.

Not even you could fight a word like terminal.

You fight regardless and slide him beneath you as if for lovemaking. Gentle fingers shift, not to please but to search. Your hands grip each other, one in place of his own. For once you pray in hope that maybe this will not be the end and jolt his heart again and again and again. Bruises well up under his skin and it drives you from the bed like a wild thing haunted.

You close the door quietly behind you, almost a mockery of his sleep. Death has visited and left it’s mark on your home. You cannot seem to hear even the clocks ticking. Each surface has been left drained, as washed of colour as he.

There is a fire in you then, as you shuffle towards the dim grey light of the kitchen. The hall wherein his door lies is cast in shadow. You do not remember clearing the books from the shelves as you pass but you hear them fall, heavy as bombs. You almost pause, listen to see if it has woken him.

There is no way to wake him.

That is perhaps why the floor is covered in glass and crockery, your shattered heart mixed among the pieces.

The colours are too bright here and your eyes sting. You remember suddenly, arguing over this blue and orange kitchen in Ikea, when you were young both, unburdened, _alive_.

Your hand fits around the final untouched cup in sight. You go to throw it but you find you cannot. Like you, it has been broken but remains, a missive from a happier time. A time when Pat could still have you against the counter, deaf to the sound of shattering pottery, intoxicated by the breaths you couldn’t catch.

The mug has a picture of you on it, both, for you are one. You notice the crack across Patroclus’ face and wonder, if only you had glued it back better, maybe.

Somehow, when you fall you do not impale yourself but scream as if you had. This is a hundred spears, a thousand arrows and one cut cord.

You cannot see the glass as you sprint over it. Your eyes leak as they have not been able to. They flood and heave with the sobs that choke your gut. The floor behind you is trailed with crimson lifeblood. You do not see much good in lifeblood anymore, not when his feet are blue with lack of it.

He would want you to, so you pick the glass out with a tweezers. The pieces drip into the sink and clatter like crystalized tears. The mirror in the bathroom is smashed. You did not wish to see yourself, not when he is missing from you.

Grief, you find, is an excellent painkiller. Still, there are many little bottles in the cabinet, full of strong little pills to ease this sort of pain. You pile them on; some for sleep, some for pain and drag your bloodstains back to bed.

There is no scent on him that your nose can find, buried in his collarbone or in his hair. You curl around him like you used to but nothing is the same. His skin is waxy and your tears slip off of it, his post-mortem way of telling you not to cry.

The drugs work quickly and you close your eyes against him.

* * *

Sleep will not relent it’s hold on you but the world calls. An unearthly banging echoes through your apartment. His skin is green and sticks to yours where you hold him. Your lips press his once and only then do you trail off to the source of the noise. Briseis, you think it is. One of your feet lags and your mouth is filled with cotton.

You do not need to tell her, she can smell the death here and perhaps, on you.

“It’s been _two days_ Achilles, I thought- I was-” She latches onto you. You find you cannot lift your arms, so you remain still, watching the curls of her hair bob as she cries. There is something of him in how she grips the back of your clothes and that somehow lets you lend her solace. It perplexes you, for you have none, even to give yourself. You feel as cold as he was that morning, inside and out.

She offers to make you tea, wary of the bedroom. You only wish to return there.

He is dead between the sheets, a rainbow of decay. He is dead and suddenly you are locking the door. Soon, Briseis is knocking again, voice high.

“Achilles?" She pauses. "Achilles!? Open the door." Her voice fades to a whisper. " _Please Achilles._ ”

Your back is braced against the door and you scream at her to _**go away**_. It rips from your throat and everything is too quiet after.

She is the trojan horse, you realise, the very picture of sorrow with her red rimmed eyes and fingers grasping for the space where her best friend used to be. She will take him away.

“You can’t have him.” Your voice is loud and tearsoaked.You will not, cannot be parted from him.

Tears dribble down your cheeks as she lets out her own fury-scream. “Achilles _please_. I know this hurts but _I_ lost him too. I can’t- His body will rot here. We both know that’s not what he wanted.”

There is a dull thud. Perhaps she falls to her knees then, as you do.

You lie with him while she makes calls. When they arrive, you carry him, as has been the way these final few weeks. He does not fling his hands around your neck this time though, lids heavy and call you his knight in shining armour. His body is stiff and neither seeks your touch nor responds to it. His best friend will not touch him, not even to say goodbye. She averts her eyes as you do, kissing him countless last times.

They take him from your arms and you feel too light, as if your own cord has been cut.

You leave the apartment door open. The world offers you little in the way of peril now or pleasure.

* * *

The bed feels too big but you cannot leave it. Day and night rise and fall, clouds pass over. You begin to run out of clothes that smell like him.

Briseis arrives often and you wonder if it is because you are each other’s final ties to Him. It is hard to say his name fully now, the way he liked. She leaves soup and often tears. The soup is often there on her return.

Briseis says she is concerned for you. You do not understand why. You have little energy and even less to say to the doctors. ‘He is dead' does not seem to count for much more than a precursor. They do not seem to understand that that is all there is. His death clouds your childhood days of climbing trees, the adolescent flurry of feeling and the later rightness. He is washed out, drained, dead, even in your memories.

You wonder when he snuck into your chest, stole your heart and replaced it with his. It cannot be yours, this heart. Its hardly seems to beat at all, feels weary, heavy in your chest.

You cannot seem to do anything but sleep, curled up in the space he left behind. You continue to wake and it troubles you.

You take the soup she brings and for the first time since, she smiles.

She is not smiling the next day when she finds you, half paralysed and staring blankly up at the ceiling.The tablets only brought you dreams. You regret the soup.

* * *

You are sick of hospitals and ambulances, you say. The pun used to make him laugh hard enough that his lungs would protest. “Hospitals cannot make people sick... I hope.” He'd say. His cheeks were hardly strong enough to smile but he still tried, for you. It became even more beautiful after that, somehow.

You have lived here in the hospital more than you have lived at home, or, he has. You are beginning to forget the difference.

In the ER, everything begins to slide and your heart lifts. This is it, you think, the downward tumble to where he waits. You will not keep him waiting much longer. The nurses notice and it is not The End, merely purgatory, but you are closer.

Briseis has begun crying again. She does not find your placations soothing. “I will be with him soon.” You do not wish for death, you tell the doctors as they pump you full of charcoal and liquid. You wish for Patroclus. It merely happens that the two have the same destination.

_“Burn us and mingle the ashes”_ You know it is your handwriting but you do not remember writing it. She found it on your chest, she screams. The sound is muffled momentarily by one of Patroclus’ hoodies slipping over your head.

For the first time since, you have the urge to comfort and you take her against your chest. Perhaps it is him in these sleeves, controlling you. You cannot bring yourself to mind for he urges softly and the feeling spreads warm along your muscles.

“I’ve just lost him Achilles, I can’t lose you, too.”

“Bri, you knew that when you lost him, you lost me too. We have been together, always." There is something like a smile on your lips when you speak the words. They feel more right than you understand, as though spanning back centuries. Something in your mind scatters at the press of her lips to your forehead as she tucks the blanket around you.

You sleep then and pray that when you wake again, he will be before you.

**Author's Note:**

> A hundred thanks to Kait for being the first one to read this <3  
> Any comments/Constructive Crit hugely appreciated (especially if I made you cry ) ^^


End file.
